Emma Gobiet

MA – Social and Cultural Anthropology (KU Leuven)

Supervisor: prof. Lara Pivodic

Emma Gobiet is a PhD researcher at the End-of-Life Care Research Group of Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), working on the European Research Council (ERC)-funded project TRAJECT (2023–2028). She also holds a personal research grant from the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) to investigate the end-of-life experiences of older people living with advanced dementia.

Emma completed her MA in Social and Cultural Anthropology at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, where she conducted an ethnographic study on older adults in Flemish nursing homes who expressed a wish to die. Within TRAJECT, she uses narrative interviewing to better understand how older people with serious chronic illnesses experience their end-of-life trajectories. Since TRAJECT cannot include participants with advanced dementia due to cognitive limitations, her FWO-funded project develops an innovative ethnographic approach to explore their experiences firsthand.